To build back or leave after the storms is one of the main issues in western Madison County

Dave Dieter/The Huntsville Times James Ferguson, a longtime resident of Stovall Road in Harvest, will build back after the storms of April 27.

HARVEST, Alabama - Near the corner of Stovall and Yarborough roads, there are still difficult decisions to be made.

Should homeowners rebuild here after another tornado? Should they move elsewhere now that three tornadoes have come through here in the last 37 years?

Can they overcome the memories of April 27, when the latest tornado shredded everything from the treetops to the foundation of many homes?

Homeowners in western Madison County, site of the heaviest damage, are struggling with these questions and others after some of the worst tornadoes in North Alabama history.

The scenes along Stovall and Yarborough roads show how lives will remain in transition long after the storms. A tent is in the back yard of a home on Yarborough Road. Farther east, in Ford's Chapel Estates, a motor home is in a backyard.

"Look at the view," said Mike Hughes, who has lived at the corner of Stovall and Yarborough for more than 20 years.

The large trees in his front yard, one of the main reasons he bought this corner lot, are on their sides. The larger trees on the horizon have been sheared. Yards are littered with debris. Roadsides are piled high with limbs.

On the front porch of Hughes' heavily damaged home is a sign that he painted days after the storms. "God bless everyone for the help. Thanks," it reads.

Hughes, a painter, also sprayed-painted a sign for his next-door neighbors, James and Bertie Ferguson. "Thank God for Life," reads the Fergusons' sign.

Hughes and the Fergusons have decided to rebuild. The decision seemed easier for James Ferguson, a maintenance worker at the Holiday Inn in Madison. "We want to rebuild because this is our home," he said. "When the good Lord takes you, we won't have far to go. The cemetery is at the end of the road."

Some of his neighbors, though, are leaving.

"(A neighbor) said this is the third (tornado) he's been through," Ferguson said. "That was enough for him. That's what his son said."

By Hughes' count, three of his neighbors on Yarborough Road are likely to leave the area.

"I know the next three houses up," he said. "They're probably gone. The landscape has changed 90 percent since (the storms)."

Because of the landscape, Hughes said he "thought hard" about the decision to stay or leave, too. But in the end, his family's ties here were too strong.

"This is where we've been since we've been married," he said. "Why go anywhere else?"

Each morning, Hughes drives from the hotel in Huntsville where he and his wife have been staying since the storms. He arrives early, stays late, does as much as he can to prepare for the rebuilding.

In a few days, he will put a motor home on his lot for better access to the recovery efforts. In a month or two, while he's waiting on the insurance claims to come through, he plans on moving into his free-standing garage.

Among his immediate goals is "to get back to some kind of normalcy," he said. All around him, though, are one reminder after another of the destruction.

Next door, Ferguson deals with the possibility of repairs of about $32,000 - the estimate a contractor gave him the other day. His plight is compounded by lack of home insurance. "I had to let insurance go to pay car and truck insurance," he said.

Up the road, on Placid Drive in Ford's Chapel Estates, Ricky Knox enters his garage and kneels by some of his best insurance - a $6,300 storm shelter that was installed about three weeks before the tornadoes.

Knox and his wife were in the shelter when the storm hit, along with his son and mother.

When the storm passed and just before he opened the storm-shelter door, Knox tried to prepare his family for what they were about to see. "We saw the sky, (and) we knew it was destroyed," he said.

Knox had completed a recent renovation of the house - new carpets, granite countertops and hardwood floors - and built a free-standing garage.

He loved the neighborhood. But he's unsure how much he loves the neighborhood after the storms.

Many of his neighbors are having similar struggles about rebuilding.

"I'm mostly hearing (they're) not," he said. "That's just a few."

In time, though, the debris will be removed. The coming of late spring will cause the landscape to flourish again, and emotions will start to heal. "You may come back and see me here," Knox said.